The analytic method introduced in this dissertation, which refers to the disciplines and subjects of jurisprudence and communication studies, is an inter-disciplinary study. This study intends to explore the interactive effects between crime news coverage, audience, and criminal policy by analyzing how crime news coverage interprets social reality and affects the values and cognitive models of the audience, and by investigating how crime news coverage impacts Taiwan''s criminal policy. What kind of reality of crime and ideology does the crime news coverage reflect? This study concludes that in recent years domestic crime news coverage has been under the influence of news commodification and sensationalism. The market-driven news often emphasizes on lurid and sensational topics and predominantly uses storyboards and human interest news frames. With descriptions unfavorable to suspects, the concept of punitiveness is frequently presented in crime news coverage. The study also explores the effect of crime news coverage on the public attitudes toward punitiveness. Through cultivation, agenda setting hypothesis and agenda building, crime news coverage has a significant mediate effect on public’s impression of crime and punishment, including increasing the fear of crime and personal victimization and reinforcing support for punitive criminal policies. In addition, under the influence of pseudo-individualization, spiral of silence and third-person effect, public opinion on crime and legal punishment is affected substantially by news coverage.

資料來源:http://handle.ncl.edu.tw/11296/ndltd/08346296648705918519